If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a hard-beaten path to his house, though it be in the woods.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

My background is in recreation and wildlife management, as well as environmental law enforcement. Why do I build furniture? Simple: it's what I love to do, what keeps me going, what I want to do for as long as I can. My woodworking career started as a kid banging nails into boards, and helping (okay, watching) family members and neighbors building things, in awe of the methods, the materials, and, of course, the tools. In school, I always excelled in art class, and learned in high school how to create with stained glass. After high school, I experimented with glass and woodworking, and after college, while working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, I heeded the urge to create with wood; I visited a well-known high end furniture maker's showroom, and I was hooked. I started Graber Woodworking LLC part time out of a one-car garage in Bowie, Maryland. Then, wanting more, I left my employment and began as an apprentice at a large custom shop outside Washington, DC, where I learned from wonderful craftsmen.Moving on several years later to Madison, Wisconsin, I rehabbed an old barn on my property and reopened Graber Woodworking, building many pieces over the next 15 years before moving to Juneau, Alaska. 

​Here in Juneau, besides settling into a new town and home, I turned small wooden gifts and sold them to galleries. Soon, however, I ended up working for the State of Alaska for several years, always missing that shop in Wisconsin, the smell of wood, the sound of the chisel slicing through fiber. Suffice it to say, I had to return to what I loved, and opened Rainforest Custom right here in Juneau.

With over 25 years of experience designing, and hand crafting hundreds of pieces, it's a pleasure to continue to fill a need in this community building quality handmade products that last for generations. In this time of the quick and easy, the mass-produced and fast-delivered items that we all buy, it's gratifying to be one of the people who still make things. People who take the time to ponder use, design, materials, and methods, and most importantly, the end user, you!
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— Dean Graber, owner of Rainforest Custom, LLC

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9999 Glacier Hwy, Juneau AK 99801   |   (907)-635-0293   |   rainforestcustom@gmail.com